October 2016

Wednesday, May 06, 2015

I'm reading all kinds of things from all kinds of people who think that Pam Geller's criticisms of radical Islam are over the top, some even suggesting that she is ultimately responsible for the Garland, Texas attack by two gunmen affiliated with ISIS.

Many are wondering why she would host a convention purposed in honoring those creating cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed. The news talk shows have been chock full of people questioning the efficacy of attacks on one of the world's largest religions.

Like a Pringles vendor sounding an alarm about obesity, Pope Francis fashioned himself a feminist last week.

You are not reading The Onion.

It was an epic mismatch of messenger and message, and I say that as someone who is thankful for this pope, admires him greatly and believes that a change of tone even without a change in teaching has meaning and warrants celebration.

But a change of tone in defiance of fact should be flagged (and flogged) as such. And neither Pope Francis nor any other top official in the bastion of male entitlement known as the Vatican can credibly assert concern about parity between the sexes. Their own kitchen is much too messy for them to call out the ketchup smudges in anybody else’s.

He left out the part about women in the Roman Catholic Church not even getting a shot at equal work. Pay isn’t the primary issue when you’re barred from certain positions and profoundly underrepresented in others.

Pay isn’t the primary issue when the symbolism, rituals and vocabulary of an institution exalt men over women and when challenges to that imbalance are met with the insistence that what was must always be — that habit trumps enlightenment and good sense.

Let’s be clear. For all the remarkable service that the Catholic Church performs, it is one of the world’s dominant and most unshakable patriarchies, with tenets that don’t abet equality.

For women to get a fair shake in the work force, they need at least some measure of reproductive freedom. But Catholic bishops in the United States lobbied strenuously against the Obamacare requirement that employers such as religiously affiliated schools and hospitals include contraception in workers’ health insurance.

Never mind that only a small minority of American Catholics buy into the church’s formal prohibition against artificial birth control. Some Catholic leaders don’t merely cling to that hoary stricture; they promote it, despite its disproportionate effect on women’s autonomy.

And how does their vilification of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an organization that represents 80 percent of American nuns, square with women’s equality? In 2012 the group was denounced by the Vatican and put under the control of three bishops charged with cleansing it of its “radical feminist” inclinations, including more attention to the poor than to sexual mores.

To his credit Pope Francis declared a truce with the nuns just last month. Also to his credit, he has signaled sympathy for women trying to limit the size of their families and has urged church leaders not to get too caught up in issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

And the trend line in the Vatican and in Vatican City government is apparently toward a greater number of female employees, though in 2014, according to The Associated Press, they held less than 20 percent of the jobs. That needn’t be the case, even factoring in women’s exclusion from the priesthood.

But the church’s refusal to follow some other Christian denominations and ordain women undermines any progress toward equality that it trumpets or tries. Sexism is embedded in its structure, its flow chart.

Frank Bruni will be seen to be heroic for that which is in essence an attack on a central tenet of Catholic theology and yet Geller is seen to be anathema for her attacks on a central figure of Islam.

Someone help me understand how Bruni will be seen to be progressively thoughtful while Geller, by many of the same people, will be seen to be regressively neanderthal?

No one denies that horrible abuses did take place but is that any excuse to burn a church that has stood for over 140 years?

What the media reports insinuated, some went right ahead and said. Australian actress Rachel Griffith said she felt “great relief” and added, “I was quite elated, like many of my generation, when I heard the news this morning.”

Elated? At the news three churches had been burned?

Imagine for a moment that these weren’t Christian churches.

If they had been mosques or temples, we’d be loudly decrying such persecution and furiously examining our consciences. We’d have a nation-wide hashtag campaign and protests in support of those whose beloved sacred places had been destroyed in the most holy of weeks. (Can I suggest #illfightchurchattackswithyou)

"I really hope that we can heal and move forward and I think that's why this particular fire - to create a metaphor - it's sometimes out of the burning ruins that something true and authentic can be reborn and I hope that's true for this parish," Griffiths said.

I take it that her words are supposed to garner sympathetic support and represent enlightened thought.

I take it that the burning of the other two churches in the area brought her more relief, more elation and more opportunities for something true and authentic to be reborn.

If these buildings had been mosques and an airhead actress had expressed support for their burnings, there would be calls to boycott her films and blacklist her work.

Monday, March 30, 2015

There’s something very dangerous happening in states across the country.

A wave of legislation, introduced in more than two dozen states, would allow people to discriminate against their neighbors. Some, such as the bill enacted in Indiana last week that drew a national outcry and one passed in Arkansas, say individuals can cite their personal religious beliefs to refuse service to a customer or resist a state nondiscrimination law.

Others are more transparent in their effort to discriminate. Legislation being considered in Texas would strip the salaries and pensions of clerks who issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples — even if the Supreme Court strikes down Texas’ marriage ban later this year. In total, there are nearly 100 bills designed to enshrine discrimination in state law.

These bills rationalize injustice by pretending to defend something many of us hold dear. They go against the very principles our nation was founded on, and they have the potential to undo decades of progress toward greater equality.

America’s business community recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all its forms, is bad for business. At Apple, we are in business to empower and enrich our customers’ lives. We strive to do business in a way that is just and fair. That’s why, on behalf of Apple, I’m standing up to oppose this new wave of legislation — wherever it emerges. I’m writing in the hopes that many more will join this movement. From North Carolina to Nevada, these bills under consideration truly will hurt jobs, growth and the economic vibrancy of parts of the country where a 21st-century economy was once welcomed with open arms.

Apple has never had an official retail presence of any kind in the Middle East, until now. Thanks to a deal struck with Jarir Bookstore, Apple is directly providing its products in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi Arabian government cleared Apple to operate in the country a couple of months ago. The agreement with Jarir will have Apple working with Saudi Arabia’s largest books and electronics retailer.

Previously, Jarir had to go through third-party vendors to get its hands on Apple products, which took three to six months. Apple will not only be supplying Jarir directly, but also offer technical support for Saudi customers. Jarir will be able to sell Apple hardware at cheaper prices now that it doesn’t have to go through third-party providers.

Apple opened up the iTunes Store in the Middle East in December of 2012. It was reported in 2011 that Apple was opening up its first Middle Eastern retail store in Dubai, but that didn’t pan out.Tim Cook visited the United Arab Emirates earlier this year to discuss how Apple can develop its relationships with carriers in nearby countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and Nigeria. “We are all about making great products that people don’t know they need today but when they have them, they can’t live without,” said Cook at the time. “We would like to bring our passion to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Africa.”

I expect to read soon about how Mr. Cook will be bringing his "passion" against religious based discrimination to the Middle East.

We permit and even celebrate most forms of evil and debauchery in our society, so our Moral Outrage energy is stored, ready to be unleashed anytime an old white guy utters something untoward about minorities. Having removed sins like baby-killing, pornography, sex-trafficking, and infidelity from the ‘Things to Get Upset About’ column, this seems to be among the only universally-recognized evils remaining.

I guess that explains why the media has pushed this to the front of their headlines, and the President of the United States of America took time out of his trip to Asia to bloviate about it.

Moral outrage is exhausting. And dangerous. The whole country has gotten a severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome from the newest popular sport of Extreme Finger Wagging. Not to mention the neck strain from Olympic tryouts for Morally Superior Head Shaking. All over the latest in a long line of rich white celebrities to come out of the racist closet.

...

They caught big game on a slow news day, so they put his head on a pike, dubbed him Lord of the Flies, and danced around him whooping.

How surprised are they at how surprised others are about Sterling's character?

Walsh:

Sterling is an old, crazy, rich, (alleged) racist who happens to own the LA Clippers. Being old, crazy, and rich, and living in California, he also has a pretty progressive love life. He left his wife a while back and started shacking up with his young west coast mistress. Now, his wife has quite unfairly accused the mistress of gold-digging, all because she just so happened to fall madly in love with a rich married man who showered her with Bentleys, diamonds, and cash.

(It happens to the best of us. Stop judging.)

The wife filed a lawsuit against the mistress, and the mistress allegedly swore to ‘get even.’ Getting even, in this case, evidently involved coaxing her lover into making some very inane and very racist comments, while secretly recording the exchange. To give you an idea of just how inane and racist: Sterling allegedly tells his *minority* mistress that he doesn’t mind if she has sex with minorities, but he doesn’t want her to be seen in public with them.

Well, this audio tape SOMEHOW made its way to that bastion of journalistic integrity known as TMZ — although the girlfriend totally had nothing to do with that, she says.

In a normal and sane society, this sordid soap opera would never be discussed outside of gossip magazines and entertainment shows, because there’s nothing very newsworthy about it. A wealthy, morally bankrupt adulterer in Los Angeles professed some unsavory views, behind closed doors, to his manipulative morally bankrupt girlfriend.

Alright.

And?

Donald Sterling can say and think whatever he wants to say and think. Given his situation, I’m not particularly surprised that he says and thinks offensive things. In fact, his overall lifestyle is far more repugnant than his ludicrous statements about black people.

Abdul-Jabbar:

What bothers me about this whole Donald Sterling affair isn’t just his racism. I’m bothered that everyone acts as if it’s a huge surprise. Now there’s all this dramatic and very public rending of clothing about whether they should keep their expensive Clippers season tickets. Really? All this other stuff I listed above has been going on for years and this ridiculous conversation with his girlfriend is what puts you over the edge? That’s the smoking gun?

He was discriminating against black and Hispanic families for years, preventing them from getting housing. It was public record. We did nothing. Suddenly he says he doesn’t want his girlfriend posing with Magic Johnson on Instagram and we bring out the torches and rope. Shouldn’t we have all called for his resignation back then?

Shouldn’t we be equally angered by the fact that his private, intimate conversation was taped and then leaked to the media? Didn’t we just call to task the NSA for intruding into American citizen’s privacy in such an un-American way? Although the impact is similar to Mitt Romney’s comments that were secretly taped, the difference is that Romney was giving a public speech. The making and release of this tape is so sleazy that just listening to it makes me feel like an accomplice to the crime. We didn’t steal the cake but we’re all gorging ourselves on it.

Both are referencing things I'm not seeing being widely reported in other outlets.

Walsh:

If anything should come of this ordeal, it ought to finally be the complete dismantling of the NAACP. The organization was scheduled to give Sterling a SECOND ‘lifetime achievement award’ in a few weeks. They’ve since rescinded, but their backtrack doesn’t get them off the hook. If Sterling really has a lifetime of achieving things in the name of civil rights and racial tolerance, wouldn’t they perhaps be a little hesitant to throw the guy under the bus? They sure seem to have cut Sharpton a ton of slack. But if he was only going to be given the honor because he’s a wealthy guy and the NAACP is nothing but a political arm of the Democrat Party, then the move makes sense. So which is it, NAACP? Are you betraying this man who, as you formerly claimed, has dedicated an entire lifetime (TWO lifetimes, in fact) to achieving racial unity, or are you a bunch of Democrat shills doling out political favors?

2009: He reportedly paid $2.73 million in a Justice Dept. suit alleging he discriminated against blacks, Hispanics, and families with children in his rentals. (He also had to pay an additional nearly $5 million in attorneys fees and costs due to his counsel’s “sometimes outrageous conduct.”)

2009: Clippers executive (and one of the greatest NBA players in history) sued for employment discrimination based on age and race.

More at the respective links worth checking out. Do so and learn.

Donald Sterling's values (or lack thereof) are to be abhorred by all and held up as despicable, intolerable and shameful.

But to ignore how despicable, intolerable and shameful are too many of his accusers is in fact to be as despicable, intolerable and shameful.

For those reasons, the words of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Matt Walsh should be widely disseminated.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

This young girl was employed in Palmelkh Saudi Arabia had the audacity to say that Jesus Christ is her Savior.

This angered much of its official work, and who ordered his men to carry out the process was to sew the mouth of the girl in order to stop the expression and permission for their love for Christ Jesus, as they are ignorant of the Magi Bedouin herders of camels in the desert, barren, sewed her left eye as well as punishment , has been sewing her mouth and the same thread.

This underlines the strange and dangerous, but endorsing the reports issued by human rights organizations in the world, and women in particular, of what it considers a flagrant violation occurs in the deadly Saudi human rights system.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

As you likely know Brandeis University has withdrawn an honorary degree from Ayaan Hirsi Ali and uninvited her to speak at next month’s commencement.

I’m old enough to remember the days when a Black African atheist feminist as a recipient for an honorary degree would be a gimme for any liberal university.

Not anymore

I’m old enough to remember when a woman who critiqued a religion that doesn’t allow women to be ministers, that allows a man to divorce a woman by simply say “I divorce you” three times and that counts a woman testimony as half the value of a man’s would be cheered by any liberal faculty.

Not anymore

For Brandeis University those values can’t compete with their fear of offending Islam and the Saudi dollars that fund CAIR.

Now if she had critiqued the Catholic Church in the way she has hit Islam, the faculty would have carried her to the commencement day podium on their shoulders but when your convictions involve no risk it’s easy to critique an organization, a religion or an individual.

Ms Ali is not of that sort.

I urge you to read the rest and learn a little more about the threats that have been made against Ms. Ali's life.

KIRO 7 has uncovered explosive new details in the case of the Capitol Hill arson at a popular gay nightclub.

Suspect Musab Masmari’s motive may have stemmed from his “distaste for homosexual people.”

Masmari is charged with arson for allegedly setting the fire at Neighbours nightclub shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day.

According to investigative documents filed in King County Superior Court, the 30-year old Masmari told a friend “that homosexuals should be exterminated.” That friend, a member of the local Muslim community, went straight to the FBI because he believed Masmari may have also been planning a terrorist attack. That friend became a confidential informant.

According to the documents, Masmari first met the informant at Fatima’s Cafe near the Masjid at Taqwa Mosque on Seattle’s East Union Street, shortly after the fire at Neighbours.

The informant contacted the FBI soon after meeting Masmari because he was "concerned" that Masmari "may be planning some terrorist activity" because he spoke of "something he's planning." The informant told investigators that Masmari told him "he had obtained a rifle."

The unidentified informant also said that, in the numerous conversations after their first meeting, Masmari often expressed a "distaste for homosexual people,” and that Masmari "opined that homosexuals should be exterminated."

“Exterminate is a word you think of - you exterminate rodents, you exterminate roaches, not people,” said Shaun Knittel, spokesperson for Neighbours nightclub.

Knittel would like to see hate crime charges added on to the arson charge. “If that doesn’t fall into the law of a hate crime, I don’t know what does,” said Knittel.

He said Masmari asked the informant during that conversation “whether they shouldn’t be the ones taking the responsibility upon themselves."

Masmari was living in Bellevue when he was arrested. Neighbor Doug Poirier recognized Masmari from the picture on the news.

"We were all freaked out and concerned when we found out what happened,” said Poirier. “That’s just a sad hate crime to do something like that - to try to burn down a night club just because it’s gay oriented,” said Poirier.

There should now be a firestorm of news on this coming from our media outlets. Wall to wall coverage. LGBT protests against the religious bigotry and small-mindedness of the assailant. In-depth exposes.

Daily Caller: A Buffalo, N.Y. community activist who is well known locally for pushing for a highly restrictive 2013 gun control law has been arrested for — wait for it — carrying a gun illegally at a public elementary school.

At about 4:15 p.m. on Thursday, police acted on a pair of anonymous 911 tips. A battalion of cops quickly swarmed the school. The brigade included over a dozen squad cars, the SWAT team and K9 units. The Erie County Sheriff’s Air One helicopter and what appears to be an armored vehicle also turned up. ...

He said he frequently carries a pistol. He has a license but the license does not matter under the strict state law Ferguson helped pass.

Among much else, the 2013 law, deemed New York’s SAFE Act, made it a felony to carry a gun on school property, according to The Buffalo News.

While it was always illegal to carry a gun on school grounds, the new law bumped the crime from a misdemeanor to a felony in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

The New York Times reported: A group of Sunni militants attending a suicide bombing training class at a camp north of Baghdad were killed on Monday when their commander unwittingly conducted a demonstration with a belt that was packed with explosives, army and police officials said.

The militants belonged to a group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which is fighting the Shiite-dominated army of the Iraqi government, mostly in Anbar Province. But they are also linked to bomb attacks elsewhere and other fighting that has thrown Iraq deeper into sectarian violence.

Twenty-two ISIS members were killed, and 15 were wounded, in the explosion at the camp, which is in a farming area in the northeastern province of Samara, according to the police and army officials. Stores of other explosive devices and heavy weapons were also kept there, the officials said.

Eight militants were arrested when they tried to escape, the officials said.

The militant who was conducting the training was not identified by name, but he was described by an Iraqi Army officer as a prolific recruiter who was “able to kill the bad guys for once.”

Sunday, January 19, 2014

“The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, penned by Thomas Jefferson, declared religious liberty a natural right and any attempt to subvert it ‘a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either.’ … Today, America embraces people of all faiths and of no faith. We are Christians and Jews, Muslims and Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, atheists and agnostics.”

“Our religious diversity enriches our cultural fabric and reminds us that what binds us as one is not the tenets of our faiths, the colors of our skin, or the origins of our names. What makes us American is our adherence to shared ideals - freedom, equality, justice, and our right as a people to set our own course.”

“America proudly stands with people of every nation who seek to think, believe, and practice their faiths as they choose. In the years to come, my administration will remain committed to promoting religious freedom, both at home and across the globe. We urge every country to recognize religious freedom as both a universal right and a key to a stable, prosperous, and peaceful future.”

“As we observe this day, let us celebrate America’s legacy of religious liberty, embrace diversity in our own communities, and resolve once more to advance religious freedom in our time.”

- from President Obama’s official proclamation recognizing Religious Freedom Day, which is Thursday.

Meanwhile...

He is, we all must agree, an extraordinary liar who's fooled far too many people over the years.